Real Estate is a LIFESTYLE

Real Estate is indeed a lifestyle. From contemporary layouts & interior design/decor, the rise and fall in economic markets, turn key and rehab properties - to know & understand the grit of real estate is to love what it represents. Home. Value. Wealth. Security blanket. Personal accomplishment. Enjoy the information on this site, and refer your family and friends to indulge in Real Estate Culture!

- NAR's 12th Housing Pulse Survey shows a vast majority of Americans believe that buying a home is a solid financial decision, and most believe that homeownership helps create safe, secure, and stable environments.

- The survey, which measures consumers' attitudes and concerns about housing issues, found that building equity and preparing for retirement are the top financial reasons for buying a home. Yet six in 10 say that they are concerned about the cost to buy a home or high rent prices in their area.

- The telephone survey of 1,500 adults nationwide in the 25 most populous metropolitan statistical areas was conducted for NAR by American Strategies and Myers Research & Strategic Services for NAR's Housing Opportunity Program. Some key findings from the year's survey include:1. Americans overwhelmingly believe that buying a home is a good financial decision; 84 percent hold that view.2. Nationally, 44 percent categorize the lack of available housing that is affordable as a very big or fairly big problem.3. Family and friends, REALTORS, and banks top list of trusted sources when it comes to buying a home or property.

To address Los Angeles' housing crisis, Mayor Eric Garcetti has proposed a "linkage fee" on new development. The city would charge new residential developments of more than five units $12 a square foot, and new commercial developments $5 a square foot, to finance subsidized affordable housing.

This proposal is well-intentioned. Given our politics, and the realities of Proposition 13, might be the best L.A. can do. But it won't raise much money or build much housing, and it dodges rather than solves the fundamental problem in our housing policy. We should try for better.

Linkage fees essentially tax new development, but housing in Los Angeles is expensive because L.A. doesn't have much development. With little to tax, revenue would stay low, and so would affordable housing production. City Hall predicts that the fee will raise $100 million a year. Affordable housing costs, on average, almost $450,000 per unit to build. That works out to about 225 units annually. Those units would unquestionably change the lives of the people who got them, but the city needs hundreds of thousands, not hundreds, of affordable units.

Perhaps homeowners were scared by the recent jump in interest rates or by the expectation of higher rates ahead, but something sparked a jump in people applying for a mortgage refinance last week.

Total application volume rose 6.3 percent for the week from the previous week. The Mortgage Bankers Association's seasonally adjusted index shows volume remains 31 percent lower than a year ago, when interest rates were lower.

Refinance volume had been falling after rates moved slightly higher, but refinance applications increased 13 percent last week, even as mortgage rates remained steady. With rates at near-historic lows for so long, even tiny rate moves can spook borrowers.

Supply and demand economics are escalating housing prices across California, particularly in the Bay Area.

In June, the state's median home price was $555,150, representing a 0.9 percent increase from May and a whopping 7 percent jump from June 2016, according to a new report by the California Association of Realtors.

In the Bay Area, meanwhile, housing supply cannot keep pace with job growth, hiking up prices. The local median home price climbed to $908,740, a 1 percent bump from May's $899,730. But, at just shy of a million dollars, that price tag is 7.9 percent higher than June 2016's $841,960, outpacing the statewide cost increase.

A closer look at the report's year-over-year sales growth reveals that Santa Clara County's median home price jumped 12.6 percent to $1,182,500 while Alameda County's rose 12.1 percent to $900,000. It increased 9.8 percent to $1,433,750 in San Mateo County, 8.8 percent to $1,469,000 in San Francisco County and 5.6 percent to $660,000 in Contra Costa County.

Foreign home buyers scooped up a record number of residential properties in the United States in the last year, despite a rising dollar and political uncertainty, according to a survey released Tuesday.

The National Assn. of Realtors said foreigners bought 284,455 properties in the 12 months that ended March 31, about a third more a year earlier. Dollar volume surged nearly 50% to $153 billion, also a record for the survey first taken in 2009.

Chinese nationals were the biggest buyers, purchasing $31.7 billion worth of property, up from $27.3 billion a year earlier and more than ever before, the Realtors said.

But the largest increase came from a surge in buyers from Canada, where prices have skyrocketed in recent years, partially due to Chinese investment there.

Canadians purchased $19 billion worth of residential property, compared with $8.9 billion in the 12 months ended March 2016, the Realtors said in their annual report on international investment.

Source: New York Times​California has a severe lack of affordable homes and apartments for middle-class families. The median cost of a home in the state has surged to $500,000 - double the national cost.

A booming economy, home construction, and apartments that haven't kept up with demand have all fueled a housing crisis throughout the state. Home prices in Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, and San Diego have surged as much as 75 percent over the past five years alone.

Homelessness in California is also on the rise. In Silicon Valley, lines of parked recreational vehicles can be found with people living inside them. In Los Angeles, some local residents are reportedly installing makeshift kitchens and living in vans within quiet neighborhoods.

The state has introduced 130 housing measures this year. Among one of the most recent actions, the Senate approved a bill to crack down on communities that have delayed or derailed housing construction proposals. The bill would restrict the ability to use zoning, environmental, and procedural laws to kill projects that may be considered "out of character" with the neighborhood. The bill is expected to be voted on again later this summer.

A mortgage isn't free - there are fees associated with getting the loan. Those closing costs usually total thousands of dollars. Besides writing a check to pay those fees at the closing table, there's another way to pay them when you refinance your mortgage: by adding them to the loan amount. The result is called a no-closing-cost refinance. Many lenders offer them. However, you'll probably have to accept a higher interest rate over the life of the loan.

Making Sense of the Story:

- No-closing-cost mortgages are attractive to borrowers who don't have the cash to pay fees upfront. Waiving the closing costs may be the ticket to getting a mortgage for a new home or a refinance.

- If you don't plan to stay in your home for more than five years, a no-closing-cost mortgage also makes sense. With a traditional mortgage, it could take more than five years to recoup the closing costs.

- The slightly higher mortgage rate associated with a no-closing-cost mortgage is still likely to be less expensive over five years than what you would pay upfront in closing costs.

- Paying a slightly higher interest rate to forgo closing costs may also make sense if you need the cash to do renovations on your home.

- If you plan to stay in your home more than five years, then a no-closing-cost loan likely will end up costing you more than a loan with closing costs. That's true whether you're taking out a mortgage for a new purchase or refinancing an existing loan.

- Typically, you'll break even on your closing costs in a few years. Going with a no-closing-cost loan saddles you with a higher interest rate over the rest of the loan. That could end up costing you a lot more than the upfront fees if you keep the mortgage for a long time.

Buying a home - especially if it's your first - can be a lot like losing weight in the sense that people end up doing, well, some pretty dumb stuff in the process. But while desperate dieters might waste money on "magical" weight-loss pills or silly exercise equipment (remember the shake weight?), misguided home buyers could be doing far more serious damage - like undermining their ability to purchase a house at all.

Don't be one of them! The good news? These flubs, which includes shopping outside your price range, submitting lowball offers in a hot market, waiting to line up financing, getting pre-qualified rather than pre-approved, and making a big purchase while in escrow, are easily avoidable.

Many out-of-towners are discovering the burgeoning city of Sacramento, which is equidistant from San Francisco and Lake Tahoe and offers the best aspects of the Northern California lifestyle for a fraction of the price. This "cow town," in fact, was recently anointed one of the nation's busiest real estate markets for 2017 by Realtor.com.

According to the Sacramento Association of REALTORS, new construction hasn't kept up with demand, while buyers from the Bay Area are beginning to flood in, leading to incredible competition for new developments and the city's stock of Victorian homes as well as a steady uptick in the average home price. It hit $317,000 in April, up from $311,000 in March and $295,000 in April 2016. Median rent is up 18 percent since 2000, according to the California Housing Partnership Coalition. The average home is on the market for just eight days, and homes near the $300,000 mark were spending just 14 days on the market, a record low.

Is the Bay Area changing Sacramento, or as one local realtor, Pat Shea of Lyon Real Estate, put it, has what happened to San Francisco - the insane homes prices and ever-tightening inventory - already arrived in the nearby city? It's true that Bay Area prices - $531 a square foot on average compared to $228 per square foot in Sacramento - have meant more people are relocating to Sacramento (20,000 a year, according to census data). With telecommuting increasingly acceptable, more are willing to make the commute or split their time between both cities. According to 2013 census data, of the 2.4 million people living in the six-county Sacramento region, about 119,000 work in the Bay.

But Sacramento isn't growing faster than any large California city, at 1.4 percent more residents a year, simply because it's a cheaper satellite city for Bay Area techies. It's coming into its own, and just happens to be near a metro area filled with residents looking for a cheaper option for urban living.

But if you can manage numerous accounts online without ever having to sit down for a face-to-face conversation with another human, why is the process of getting a mortgage so different?

The real estate financing process is often expected to be a series of in-person meetings at banks or other offices, complete with scanning documents of financial background information and a slow approval process. But those days are rapidly changing. Lenders are beginning to embrace more new technology, and new lenders are even entering the game based around an automated platform.